I'm Only Dying
by Spike Daft
Summary: Peace in Superjail can never last. This time, the only hope of saving it lies with an unexpected source. Chapter 11 up. Yes, you heard me right.
1. Euphoria

_So yeah. Superjail has officially eaten my brain and converted it to a gray mush of a thickish consistency that oozes little trails of fanfic here and there. Why study for an exam in molecular anatomy when you can sit in front of your laptop and write a story that'll in no way benefit you? The choice is obvious._

_That said, wash your hands after reading this stuff. It seems like the Superjail bug is really catching; if you ever look on Deviantart, you'd see that it's now more of an epidemic._

_I love epidemics._

_-SD_

____________________________________

While one who sings with his tongue on fire  
Gargles in the rat race choir  
Bent out of shape from society's pliers  
Cares not to come up any higher  
But rather get you down in the hole that he's in.

-Bob Dylan

Jared's first employed day in Superjail had taught him, among other things, that one's calendar or date book tended to vanish as soon as one left it unattended.

On his first day he would have laughed if someone told him that eventually he would find time immaterial. He was always a person set in his ways; an obsessive watch-checker. In fact he still wore it, even after this lengthy, indistinct time in the prison's unique plane of existence. It comforted him and came to represent the outside world; that somewhere outside this dimension there still existed order. But he had eventually learned to take time's evasive passage in stride, just as he did with the bloodshed and the rainbows that streaked through his vision on a regular basis. A place like Superjail was never less than a massive distraction from such things; there was always something more important to think about.

Strangely, Jared could keep track of the days themselves; the sun always rose and always set (sometimes much later than normal, he knew now). He knew when it was Wednesday (the cafeteria food was extra stale on Wednesdays), knew any day of the week it was and the day before it. The day after, however, was always a little…hazy. Anything beyond_ that_ seemed to blur out, then vanish; become incorporeal. Time in Superjail did not pass in the same manner as it did on the outside.

The prison had been doing surprisingly well after the matter with the Time Court had been settled. Nothing major had happened since then; in fact even Jacknife's escape attempts became scarce after a few security upgrades. The inmates seemed less edgy than usual, the Warden's customary episodes of insanity had evened out and lightened up; even the weather was unerringly mild. Even the typically edgy accountant began to succumb to the lull of normalcy.

He should have known that it would not last. Nothing resembling peace ever could in Superjail.

One day, news came to the Warden in the form of a letter from DL Diamond.

It read, Remember me, ha? Sending you a note because we have some news. First, we're now a church, so donations are welcome. Also, the Galactoids want to have me come back to Superjail for a second tour. They loved how free everyone's minds were, and how everybody had crystals, but it seems like there's a mega huge amount of negatons just INFESTING your jail. That's probably why those inmates cause so much trouble for you. Was wondering if ya'd like us to come on back and help kick some negaton ass. Free of charge! - **DL DIAMOND**.

He had balls, did DL Diamond. Jared thought that he _had_ to have known about the damage he left in his wake during his last stay at Superjail. What catastrophic repercussions that drug had on people, especially violent, overcrowded men in a violent, overcrowded prison. Maybe he thought Superjail might never notice that it had been robbed; everyone was so brainwashed anyway.

So how did he grow big enough balls to write this letter?

Jared had never been one to pry, but he had his suspicions about the Warden's feelings regarding DL. It wasn't good.

Example: the look that glazed over the Warden's eyes as he lowered the letter to the desk. It wasn't anger. Jared had expected anger (maybe more like hoped); he himself felt angry enough to kill that man. But no.

No, this was something very different. Jared had studied his boss's expressions for so long that he knew them well. And this evening, as the Warden lowered the letter from his face, Jared saw…

_Euphoria_.

"S-sir," he ventured, "can I… read the letter?"

Warden's eyes stayed faraway, glassy, as he automatically passed the note. Jared read it, his anger and nervousness rising. When he was finished he handed it back to the Warden, who took it numbly. He was distant… lost in thought, perhaps. Jared himself felt the panic attack rise up and then hit him and suddenly he was dizzy and panting. Warden's eyes snapped back to reality and he reached over to steady Jared, looking concerned.

"Hey Jared… c'mon with that…what's wrong with you?"

"Panic attack," answered Jared, jittery. "It's okay, it'll go away in a minute." He expected the Warden's attention to be absorbed by the note again, but he stayed, looking uneasy and watching his accountant carefully.

"Do they hurt? Like a heart attack?"

"Nah," said Jared, smiling a little. The man had never heard of a panic attack; too rich. It was so…_Warden_. "You just… I dunno, you feel dizzy and it's hard to catch your breath, like after you've been running. Sometimes your chest feels weird, but then it goes away."

"…Huh. Weird."

"Yeah," Jared said. "It is."

It took a few minutes of rather comfortable silence before Jared was finally able to ask what Warden thought about the letter.

"Mmmmhhmm, the letter." His eyes were getting glassy again, fluttering with rapture. "Of course he can come back. I _knew_ he'd love Superjail! This time, though, maybe he can bring the Galactoids. It will be so _exciting_!"

Jared sat staring out of the bay window behind the Warden's desk. A few moments before his boss had finished speaking, a rainbow had streaked across the sky over Superjail. He smiled a little.

"What?" asked Warden, turning around to peer out the window.

"I see a lot of those whenever the subject of DL Diamond is brought up, sir."

"What?" Warden looked around. "Rainbows?"

"Yes, sir."

Warden blinked at him, confused, and Jared jumped at a thought: what if the Warden wasn't aware that these things happened around him? All this time he had supposed, even assumed, that his boss knew. He couldn't really be that unobservant, could he?

Mercurially, Warden's confused expression softened into amused resignation. "Jared, you're _bizarre_. You know that? Sometimes I just don't understand you."

_It's more than 'sometimes', sir_, thought Jared, but he smiled as he thought it.

Of course, plans were made immediately to arrange DL Diamond's return to Superjail. Jared's trepidation was all-consuming, even as he spoke with the woman at the number Diamond had provided he could feel himself wanting to hang up, to just call it off. Yet despite his misgivings, he could not force himself to disobey the Warden's orders. He liked to tell himself that this was because of an innate fear of being fired, but if he squinted at the feeling just right, it looked like more than that. Maybe a lot more.

So he put his head down and bulldozed through his deeper voices until the only sound he heard was the echo of the Warden's voice, and he waited for DL Diamond to arrive.

It was like waiting for a hurricane.


	2. Gloom

_**Ludak Valgkrets**__: I appreciate the reviews! It's very good news to me that someone's reading this. I think a lot of SJ fans have given up reading the fanfic because of the influx of Mary Sues. Can I blame them? No. Can I resent them for not contributing more proper fanfic anyway? Hell yes. Ha._

-_SD_Chapter Two

Darkness at the break of noon  
Shadows even the silver spoon  
The handmade blade, the child's balloon  
Eclipses both the sun and moon  
To understand you know too soon  
There is no sense in trying.

**-**Bob Dylan

***

The next day Jared woke to thunder rattling the panes of the window. The sound jerked him half out of a deep sleep and he sat up, still mostly dreaming, and bolted to the window, his flailing hand twisting in the drapes as he yanked them away from the glass and stuck his face there. Just as he did Jared woke fully from his dream to see white hot veins of lightning streak around the sky. He allowed himself a relieved chuckle; in his dream, the thunder had sounded like an explosion. He had run to the window, his stomach sinking, fully expecting a catastrophic riot to be happening outside.

He had never been happier to see a thunderstorm. Usually he disliked them, because certain weather seemed to happen when the Warden was in certain moods. When moods were not good, it rained and stormed a lot. No one would disagree; they all knew what the weather was like, too, though Jared figured that he was the only one to have linked it to the Warden; no one else mentioned anything like that. For everyone else it was just weird weather; unpredictable. All sun one minute, the next a thunderstorm. Just like Superjail.

Just like his boss.

Jared dressed and shaved as usual, trying not to rush though he wanted to see the Warden, to observe the man's mood this gloomy morning, mostly to prove to himself that he wasn't making nonsensical connections. As sure as he always felt at the moment of these epiphanies, any distance of time always brought him back to the familiar feeling of self-doubt that had accompanied all his nervous life. And though time was so relative in Superjail, he wished fervently that some day soon it would simply stop; perhaps early enough to make it impossible for DL Diamond to come back.

Since the arrival of the letter, he had been unable to get a restful night's sleep, or to soothe the heartburn he felt during the entirety of his waking hours. It had only been a couple of days, but he felt himself beginning to break down beneath the weight of the dread that sat like a yoke on his shoulders. The tiny Inner Voice that had accompanied his thoughts his entire life just made the burden heavier with its dour logic. Sometimes the burden felt heavier than usual.

Like now, during these times of contemplation. Everything seemed like too much, yet there was no other way around it. He cursed the Warden for his naivety; his childish love for a man that Jared had exposed as a criminal right before his yellow-framed eyes and yet he _still_ acted love stricken at the mention of his name. Alice was no help to Jared; horrifically enough she too held reverence for that man, judging from the flush in her cheeks whenever he was mentioned.

Everyone was blind. Except for Jared. He found himself wishing—even trying—to blind himself to be like the others; the temptation for escapism was overwhelming. Everyone else seemed so blissfully ignorant; why couldn't he be as well?

_Because_, retorted the Inner Voice, _that's not your place here._

It was true. His place was Vigilance in the face of ignorance. To hold the ripping seams of Superjail and its inhabitants tenuously together beneath the guise of financial nitpicking. They needed him to see.

They _needed_ him.

And, though he would never say it aloud, he had made it his job to protect the Warden from whatever he could. A job that he had unconsciously taken upon himself; one that he would live to curse time and again, but never abandon.

_Because they needed him_.

He finished his morning rituals, swallowing down the acid in his throat and with it, that burning Voice. When the time came to walk the long separated corridors that led to his office he kept a brisk pace, as if trying to shed a dogged pursuer.

Coming from his living quarters he had to walk past the Warden's office on the way to his own. Today he paused at it, his hand on the heavy door. His boss was probably meditating (a polite term for daydreaming or sleeping), or very possibly scribbling endless sketches of plans and ideas on the white butcher paper he kept rolled in his desk, off again on some wild tangent. He liked the butcher paper rolls because his plans would go on and on, what would have been pages and pages of sheet paper covered with spiky, impatient doodles and words. The Warden had told Jared that having to move from one page to another distracted him and made him forget. Jared supposed that it would be easy to interrupt the seamless, shifting evolution of his thoughts. They came suddenly and spectacularly likely to dart away at any moment, like a hummingbird at a feeder.

Yet, as unwelcome as he supposed he would be, Jared's curiosity got the better of him and he knocked lightly on the oak. The rapping sound his knuckles made echoed like a pond ripple down the vast hallways.

There was no answer, which he half-expected anyway. He cracked open the door and peeked in to see that the Warden wasn't even in yet. He shut the door again, feeling uncharacteristically perturbed, and headed on, trudging glumly toward the next ten hours of his life.

***

Alice was bored.

She arrived at the main inmate housing wing her typical five minutes early. It was fairly quiet all around; probably they were listening to the storm. It was a hell of a storm, too. Angry sounding; ominous. She liked storms; the way they sounded, the way they smelled, the way the concrete darkened and glistened like a tearing eye. The way they could change the nature of the natural light and in so doing change the nature of the day.

She approached the cell block as another mumble of thunder sounded, ample hands on ample hips, and cocked her pink gaze at the cells. "Scared, girls? You should be. If ANY of you try swapping trays again, it's Alice that's gonna bring the thunder."

No one responded and she grunted, slightly disappointed. It seemed not everyone felt the way she did about storms.

Jailbot was hovering by the entrance of the guard tower as she approached. His pixeled face was passively smiling, oblivious to the way the weather affected his fleshy counterparts. Alice liked Jailbot for traits like this; he couldn't speak so he never bored her with stories, his emotions were basic, uncomplicated (as far as she knew), and easy to read, lit up brightly on the screen.

Plus, his wrath was epic.

They rode up the elevator to the control room as thunder rumbled again. As she hit the button she became aware that she felt distinctly uneasy; unlike herself. Unsure of something, everything.

She placed a surreptitious hand on her cheek. Her face was hot and flushed and the space around her seemed almost terrifyingly small. By the time the doors opened at their destination she was standing with her hand on her club, ready to strike out if anything lay on the other side that might leap at her.

Of course, nothing came lunging out of the control room and she stepped out with Jailbot in tow. The panoramic windows overlooked the entire block and the grounds to one side; she could see the thunderclouds beyond.

She couldn't understand why she felt nervous, but the feeling did not go away.


	3. Diamonds

_Thanks to the THREE PEOPLE that reviewed. I don't wanna waste the effort on this story if no one's gonna read it. And to the two-hundred and four of you who are reading this story (yes, I can tell, it's called the Story Stats option), I've got an ultimatum for you: review—it doesn't take but a sec-- or this story doesn't go any farther than this chappy here._

_For the people who did review, just contact me and I'll send you chapter updates. That is, unless the lazy people get off their lazy-trains at the Reviewtown Station and leave a little something behind. _

_-SD_

**Chapter 3: Diamonds**

**My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards  
False gods, I scuff  
At pettiness which plays so rough  
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs  
Kick my legs to crash it off  
Say okay, I have had enough  
What else can you show me?**

**-Bob Dylan**

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Warden loved diamonds.

It wasn't a stature thing, which was surprising considering the reaches of the Warden's ego. It was the nature of the stone itself. The way, when cut, the stone reflected and refracted the most eye-catching rainbows, sparkling and morphing and brilliant in hue. He could stare into a well-faceted diamond for literally hours on end, tilting it this way and that, transfixed. He studded diamonds into the most odd places, wherever he thought a person (or, more importantly, himself) might pleasure in an unexpected burst of colour.

There were diamonds studded indiscriminately into walls at eye level. One might also find a stone peeking out from just below the eyehole in a door, or in the basin of a sink. There were even diamonds studded randomly into the tops of lunch tables. Naturally the Warden affixed a few into the top of the desk in his office, where he could wile away the hours staring at the prisms of coloured light instead of (much less captivating) paperwork.

The supply of the stones seemed endless. He kept them in a safebox in his quarters, embedded behind a faux panel in one of the walls. He never saw the supply drop; he would think about opening the safebox and as soon as he did so, there was the undiminished pile of faceted stones, ranging in size from the head of a pin to a quarter dollar, each polished and gleaming and just waiting to be subject to his gaze. He would pluck them out and hold them, marvelling at how they felt cold as ice no matter how long they were in the grip of his fevered hands.

So when he first heard of DL Diamond, before he had heard a tape or even seen a picture of the man, the Warden was fascinated. Surely a man with a name like DL Diamond must be far beyond the reaches and abilities of other men; sparkling out from the rest just as the stones shone out from the bland surfaces in which they had been embedded.

And indeed, he held the Warden's gaze much the same way; captivated him to the point of becoming unaware of anything else. The tapes soothed him, filled him with a familiar warmth and an unfamiliar calm, and seeing DL in person was just indescribable. There was no way Jared's claims could be true; this man was magic incarnate. He would never lower himself to the level that the Warden's accountant seemed to believe he was at.

Today, as he sat looking out of his bedroom window, watching the rain beads slug down the glass, he felt…strange.

He was excited, of course. DL Diamond would be here by the end of the day; he would once again have the man in his own little world. He would have a chance to show him what power he had here in Superjail; the way he ran everything. He wanted to impress Diamond, of course, but he kept brushing the thought away from his face like a stray hair.

He should have been in his office fifteen minutes ago, but a thought had been gnawing at him. He woke up this morning after unpleasant dreams, and the thought was sitting in the dead center of his mind. No, he thought, it's less like a thought and more like a little video clip. And he woke up with it on a loop in his mind: DL Diamond fleeing in a truck, AWAY from the Galactoids, and then the next thing the Warden saw was Diamond ascending up in the alien's ship.

It was bothering him; something was missing there.

And what was worse, the Twins were still gone.

Soon after the news of DL Diamond's imminent return, they had simply…disappeared. Gone wherever they went when they were not in Superjail. Another planet? Who knew? The thing was, they did this before bad things happened. The _really_ bad things. They were the rats that deserted the ship, because although not all beings in Superjail were inmates, the Twins were the only ones who ever really could escape. Jacknife came close, but he was always captured.

Bad things happened in Superjail all the time, admittedly, but the Twins only ever actually left Superjail when something big, BIG was going to happen. They had vanished only days before the Warden met the Time Police; they knew damn well that something big was coming.

Excited as he was about today, the Warden could not stop playing the scene over in his mind, and his eyes constantly searched for any sign of the Twins.

But they were long gone.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

DL Diamond, guru of masses, arrived at Superjail just past seven in the evening, SJ time. He came in a tour bus, of all things, which confused the Warden, who had of course expected him to descend majestically in the Galactoid's ship, all spinning and flashing and glittering lights.

But it was a tour bus that housed him, a step up from the van he had come in the first time, and there were obviously no Galactoids with him. Only two familiar-looking females in short capes, their faces painted, their eyes ferret-like and quick to dart around, as though looking for something they expected to be there. They walked before Diamond himself, who stepped out of the bus with a shorter, professional-looking man in tow. This man wore no cape; was absent of tights, preferred of a well-tailored black suit and carrying a briefcase. Two more women flanked them, forming a bizarre entourage that crossed over from the access road and to the front of the Staff Housing unit, and came to a stop in front of the Superjail staff.

Jared saw the Warden biting his lip slightly, holding back his glee as they approached, and he felt another low pulse of hatred at the painted man in the white robes. It sat heavy in his chest and throbbed like a crushed thumb.

The Warden spread his arms in welcome; elation shone in his face as bright as the sun in this bizarre world. "So glad you made it, Mr. Diamond!"

"DL to you, good buddy!" crowed Diamond, pointing. The man's grin was a false as his teeth.

Jared's eye caught the streak of a rainbow in the sky beyond Diamond's left shoulder. He scowled.

It didn't go unnoticed. Beside DL, the man with the briefcase narrowed his eyes, surveying Jared as one might study a venomous snake. He nudged Diamond imperceptibly, but it was enough. Now DL was watching Jared, too.

The talk came to a stop. Warden, oblivious as always, broke the tension with a grand sweep of his arm, indicating the immensity of the private housing structures. "You look like you've had a long trip. Let me show you to your rooms so you can relax and get some rest."

"Thanks, man," chirped DL. "I'm good to go; you know those Galactoids have some extreme party trips; I can go for days now. But my, uh…" he gestured toward the man beside him.

"Accountant," said the brown-haired man.

"Yeah, my _accountant's_ a major paper-pusher, man." Diamond gave the man a bump with his hip. It appeared that the man didn't appreciate the friendly nudge but was silent. "He needs to get some sleep so he can keep crunchin' those numbers, ya know?"

The Warden grinned. "I think your accountant and my accountant have a lot in common. Maybe Jared could show…uh…"

"Mr. Sharpe."

"…he could show Mister Sharpe around Superjail a little tomorrow. Yes?" The Warden looked all around, heard no argument, and nodded. "Okay then! Follow me and I'll show you to your rooms. I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that we've built a bar."

"Let's get this party started!" DL exclaimed, and walked beside the Warden, all of the others in tow: Jared beside Alice and close behind the Warden. Jailbot followed them protectively, himself followed by first one then another set of blank faced women.

Mr. Sharp was the last to follow; he walked slowly behind them with the careful step of a man who is studying something intently whilst moving.

His eyes were nowhere and everywhere at once.

They were just closing the main doors behind them when the earthquake hit.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Want more? I think you know what to do… -SD_


	4. The Rainbow Book

_Hey guys. Well, you didn't disappoint, thanks for the reviews! Whee! _

_I don't expect you to review for every chapter or anything (tho it would be nice. And if you don't wanna, that's ok too. Just send money instead). And if you're going, "harrumph! fuck you, Spiekaline, for holding off my fic fix until I praise you!", know ye this: It's not a 'PRAISE ME' kinda thing; it's more of a, 'how many people would be pissed if I got bored with the story and stopped writing it' kinda thing. Because I have a bad habit of doing that. So there you go. As we say in my country, ich bin nicht Ihre Hündin.  
_

_Oh and also: don't be a douchebag in your review and then post it anonymously. It kinda makes you look like, well...a yellow douchebag.  
_

_Anyway guys, pretty long-ass chapter here. Don't get used to it. Ha, no... hopefully I'm kidding.  
_

_ALSO: thank fanfic dot net for the extra special delay in this update, having denied me login/update access for damn near two days now._

'_Kay. Enough blathering. Story time RIGHT NOW! __:D_

_-SD_

**Chapter 4: The Rainbow Book**

**So don't fear if you hear  
A foreign sound to your ear  
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.**

**-Bob Dylan**

**______________________________________________________________________________________________________  
**

For a moment, all life in Superjail stood still.

As soon as the shaking began, Jailbot had acted on instinct, extending his long actuators out to curl around Jared, Alice, and the Warden. He hovered briefly as he extended his free arm to smash the doors open, and then, clutching his bizarre family tightly to him, he shot out of the hole he had made in the wall and out to the flat ground of the Yard, where nothing could fall on them.

All of this had, in reality, taken only about seven seconds, and by the time everyone figured out what the hell had happened and why they were outside, the shaking had stopped.

Even the birds were silent.

The Warden was the first to recover. He adjusted his jacket, which had become slightly rumpled during his 'rescue', and surveyed the damage to the front doors. DL, Sharpe, and the four women peered out at them through the large hole in the front of the building. All but Sharpe looked confused; perhaps slightly frightened. Sharpe himself appeared perplexed, and very definitely worried. For several moments his eyes remained on Jailbot, unreadable. Dark.

"Jared!" cried the Warden, almost accusingly. "What the f—"

"An earthquake, I think, sir." Jared looked around. "I- I think it was just a little one. The only damage that I can see is…well…" He shrugged in the direction of the smashed wall.

"You can't blame Jailbot for trying to protect us," the Warden said primly, marching over to the robot, arms out to hug. Jailbot's LED readout changed from miserable to happy in an instant, and he tilted himself downward for better hug access. If Jailbot had been a cat, he would have been purring. Loudly.

By this time DL and the others were approaching them.

"Dude, that is one FREAKY robot! The wall's gone!" cried Diamond. He looked over the Superjail staff, critically. He appeared satisfied after a brief moment, but decided to ask anyway. "You guys okay?"

Everyone nodded, smoothing down clothes and hair. Alice adjusted her glasses while surreptitiously tugging at her skirt. Warden finally broke his embrace with his robot, still seemingly oblivious to the calculating stare of Mr. Sharpe, and looked at DL.

"Well, _that _was weird," he muttered sheepishly. "Uhm… that won't affect your stay, of course. Alice, could you get a work crew together to fix that wall?"

Alice grunted and strode away, secretly happy to get away from everybody.

"This thing's in a volcano," said Mr. Sharpe suddenly, still watching the retreating form of Alice. "Is it active?"

There was a long pause, and then, "Well…"

DL gaped at the Warden's hesitation. "Wait… you're saying it _is_?"

"Well, I mean, it was only this one time. Just a lava breach, and it only went into a small part of the cellblock, and…well…"

"Never mind," Mr. Sharpe interjected. Oddly, DL's protestations fell silent at the sound of the man's voice. "I'm sure your facility is as safe as can be. If you don't mind, we would like to retire to our quarters. We both have a bit of work to do."

The Warden took off his hat, smoothing his spiky hair. He looked crestfallen, as though the talk of the volcano had ruined his moment. "Yes, it's late; you must be tired. Tomorrow we'll take you on a tour if you'd like…"

"Sounds delightful," said Sharpe, a tight little smile playing around his mouth. He reached up and placed a hand on DL's shoulder. DL looked undecided, as though he wanted to see more of the place before retiring, but his accountant's subtle yet insistent tug toward the guest quarters seemed to overpower his will. He relented and fell in step beside him as they followed the Warden and Jared.

Jailbot brought up the rear, watchful. It was almost as though he did not trust the two men that had come into the great fortress that was his home.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After his guests returned to their quarters, the Warden had lapsed into an uncharacteristic silence that clung to him stubbornly like a shroud for the rest of the evening. He seemed distant, thoughtful; even a touch melancholy. He had spent some time in his office, listlessly prodding at a dying potted plant, and then had retired to his room early as a gentle rain began to fall outside. He quite clearly did not wish to discuss the happenings of the day he had looked forward to for so long.

To make things worse, all of his plants were dying.

Many of them were rare; a few could be found in the strange reality of Superjail but nowhere else. He liked them, sitting in their pots, colors vibrant and soothing and nothing like the cold oppression of the walls that surrounded them. They pleased him much like the diamonds did; pleased his eyes.

That was important. Color soothed him like nothing else could.

When Warden was small child he would often wake up in the middle of the night, fussing. When he was especially young, his sobs would eventually wake his father, who would come into his room to see what the ruckus was about.

The prison mogul by nature did not largely tolerate what he considered to be "soft" emotions. For instance, all his life he claimed that he never dreamed, that they were bad for you and made you want to live inside your head, to be useless to society. And while it was a hard way to live one's existence, both on oneself and on others, it was necessary. Much like the penitentiaries he had built or served in all around the world, this pitiless way of life had taken a lifetime of careful cultivation, indispensable in his chosen (fated?) field.

But there was one thing that no amount of emotional hardening could change: he loved his son.

It was sometimes hard to see, especially if one was used to dealing with him on a professional basis. He would often scold the boychild, admonishing him for being distracted by his imagination. It seemed harsh, but secretly the prison mogul was afraid—no, terrified—that his son would grow up daft, or worse: that he could fold and become a victim of the animals he ruled.

It had happened to his mother; it could happen to him, and his father was not going to let it happen again.

But there was another side of the prison mogul, not as visible to an onlooker but there just the same. The Unconquerable Emotion, the one that lived deepest in his heart; the one that plunged his stomach straight down into his polished shoes at any and every unhappy sound that his boy made. It was the Emotion that sometimes made him have to leave the room to wipe at his eyes when he looked upon his son, a tiny copy of his beautiful mother. Sometimes he cried for several minutes and had to come back into his company, wiping his nose and cursing the allergies he got from the ragweed and strawflowers scraggling across the prison yards.

So every time he heard his child, his precious first-and-only son, cry out in the dark he went to him without hesitation, bringing with him the only consolation he would need: the Rainbow Book.

He had no idea where it had come from, but there it was on his office desk one morning when he came in, bleary from rocking his son, who was still inconsolable from his night-terrors. He had set the wailing boy down on the floor with a tired grunt and opened it. Inside were wheels of colors; some were brilliant and some were soft. When spun quickly enough the colors would bleed together, making new colors, making rainbows. The colors were so bright he could almost hear them; too bright for anything in this cold, grey, washed-out world. Absurdly, he felt guilty to be staring at the pages, as though he were sinning.

The prison mogul had been so drawn in that he at first didn't notice the boy tugging on his pant leg. He started and looked down into the intense, rapt gaze of his son; a carbon-copy of his late wife's.

The child stared up at him, tiny lips slack, huge child's eyes glassy and searching. His father knelt down and held out the book to him. Slowly he took it; from somewhere far away he felt himself sit down on the floor, and then the only thing he could smell or see or feel or hear was in the book before him.

His reaction never changed either, no matter how old the Rainbow book was becoming, and it didn't take long for the prison mogul to bring it to him when he woke up crying in the night. He would bring a lamp and sit with his son and rock him as the little wheels in the book turned; they turned wheels in the child's head as well, and soon he spun so fast and far away that reality mashed with dreams and he slept, smiling.

One day he asked his father if it was possible that a ghost could live in a book.

The prison mogul had started up from his paperwork and simply gawped. "A _ghost_? Whatever do you _mean_, boy? What _ghost_?"

"Mum's ghost," the boy said.

The prison mogul simply stared.

"I can hear her talking to me when the wheels make rainbows. She whispers."

His father's disbelieving stare was slowly starting to morph into something else; something he didn't recognize.

"All you are hearing," he pronounced, "is the sound of the wheels spinning on the paper. Ghosts do not exist."

"But… but if there are no ghosts then what happens when you die?"

The prison mogul came out from round his desk, and crouched in front of his boy. "Listen to me," he said. "Don't let your imagination run wild on you. We aren't meant to think about things like that. It clouds our minds and makes us _weak_. And where we live, what happens to the weak ones?"

"The bad men get them," whispered the child. His eyes were welling up and his mother's face flashed at him from nowhere and everywhere at once.

"Yes, son," said his father gently, lovingly, and thumbed a spilling tear from his cheek. "The criminals. You're too old to say 'bad men'. What are they called?"

"Criminals," whispered the child.

The prison warden stood; brushed off his pants. Handed the Rainbow Book to his boy, who clutched it like a life buoy, the colors reflecting in his unshed tears and making faint rainbows down his cheeks. His father smiled, an expression that was reserved solely for his son. "That's right. My big boy."

Three days later, he was dead.

Many untold years later, the Warden would still think back to the fleeting time in his life when his father lived; some days in particular. On days like this one, when things seemed to build to a climax only to go catastrophically wrong, it brought it all back. The potted plants and flowers with their slowly turning shades of sickly brown didn't help ease his unhappiness, and soon he was downright morose, sitting in his chambers with the plants in their death-throes all around him.

He managed at last to sleep, only to awaken with night-terrors, and rest did not return to him until he was curled up tight beneath the darkness with the tattered Rainbow Book clutched against him.

He dreamed of his mother, and the bad men.

The Criminals.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jared remained in his own office until late, long after the rainstorm had cleared, fretfully adding up the cost of the accommodations the Warden had insisted upon for DL Diamond and his entourage. The accountant was stressed out, confused, and paranoid after the earthquake incident. It had been minor, but it had also never happened before, as far as Jared was aware.

And Jared was aware of a lot of things in Superjail. More even than the Warden, or so he believed.

And although quite a lot of horrific and terrifying things happened in Superjail on a near daily basis, Jared was somehow more unnerved by the earthquake than he had been by anything else that had happened in his time within the bizarre penitentiary. Perhaps it was because the occurrence of other events, no matter how awful, was always someone's plan. Usually the Twins, though the Warden himself was behind a fair share of it also. It was chaos, but it was controlled. Deliberate. The earthquake had not been anyone's plan; the Twins were gone, which unnerved Jared perhaps more than the earthquake itself. The Warden obviously had not planned on the events of the day, either, and though Alice had managed to maintain her stoicism on the outside, her eyes told a different story altogether. She had not clocked out when the end of her shift came, but remained on the cell block, holding a vigil to which she would never admit, even under pain of death. That was her nature, and was likely a part of the reason behind the Warden's open adoration.

Jared was at once envious, frightened, and in awe of Alice. And he knew her loyalty to Superjail ran deep; though he supposed he would not sleep very well this night, he did feel a measure of comfort in knowing that the prison guard remained on the cell block, keeping watch over her violent flock like a shepherd.

Keeping watch, perhaps, over them all.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In the musty darkness of the cell block, most of the inmates lay sleeping and oblivious beneath their thin, stiff blankets. Snores resonated off of the concrete and steel as prisoners exchanged fighting against one another for fighting against their nightmares.

Except for the inhabitants of one cell.

Nearly silent, careful of Alice's vigil, an inmate named Jacknife and his cell mate sat together on the bottom bunk, a well-worn scrap of paper held between them. On it was a crudely drawn map, and by the starlight filtering in from the high barred windows they plotted over it.

Their whispers went on long into the night, unheard.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Got anything for me? Alms? Reviews? Money? Fellatio?_


	5. Lights Out

**Chapter 5: Lights Out**

**You lose yourself, you reappear  
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear  
Alone you stand with nobody near  
When a trembling distant voice, unclear  
Startles your sleeping ears to hear  
That somebody thinks  
They really found you.**

**_______________________________________________________________________________________________________**

"So you're sure he'll go for it," said DL Diamond skeptically.

They were back in their guest quarters for the evening, the girls in one room and the boys in another, as proper as you please. DL was getting tired of the conversation entirely, but Mr. Sharpe was not a man to be denied, so he sat impatient and fidgeting in his seat as the plan was laid out before him again and again.

"As long as you make it convincing," said Mr. Sharpe, "he will undoubtedly cooperate. I mean, it's obvious that the man is in love with you, DL. It will be a dream come true for him."

DL looked skeptical. "How are you so sure he's got the hots for me? He could just be taken in by my charisma."

Mr. Sharpe didn't bother to stifle his laugh; it was short and barking in the quiet room. "Stop being lazy and _work_ for this, Diamond. Remember what you stand to gain. Can you even _comprehend_ the amount of money we could get out of here? The amount of _power_ you will inherit when we own this place? Are you doubting your influence over him now? No, I get it: you've got cold feet."

DL grunted. "DL Diamond _knows_ how to lure someone in. I'll fucking show you. Pass me the wine."

Mr. Sharpe smiled and handed over the bottle, the first of two that had been sent up by the Warden that evening, after a quiet and awkward dinner together in a rather lavish conference room. DL grabbed the opener from the gift basket and used it to yank out the cork, which he threw against the door that separated their room from the women's. "HEY! Come out here, goddammit! There's wine!"

The door opened a crack and two of the four women that accompanied them stuck their heads out, looking annoyed.

"WELL?" demanded DL.

The taller of the two-- a cruel-looking woman with a beautiful body that was only just covered by a white teddy-- lifted a brow at him. "Jenna and Nat are asleep. Do you want us to wake them up, too?"

DL considered for a moment. "Hmm… no, just you two. That way we can still have fun but there'll be more wine."

"Ever the conservationist," muttered Mr. Sharpe. He stood up and loomed in front of DL, ensuring that he had the man's complete attention. "Now listen, this is an important thing I want to stress to you: _do not touch him until you are both safely in this room with the door shut_. Understood? We don't know where any cameras might be; if you're observed trying to harm him then the guard could be here in an instant. Or worse, the robot could come up here. And that would be THE END, do you understand?"

DL snorted, shaking off the momentary sharp pain in his ego. "I _told_ you, DL Diamond _knows_ how to get someone alone in a room. Mellow out and have a little faith already. And don't worry about the robot."

Sharpe look mystified but didn't say anything, distracted as the shorter of the two girls crossed the room and approached him. She gave him a sly smile and slid into his lap.

"Relax, DL's a pro. Here, let me help you…"

Mr. Sharpe's grin was feral as the girl began her ministrations. He had never been so excited to see the sun rise, and though he was impatient for the morning to come the woman in his lap was doing a good job of passing the time.

"Party time!" crowed Diamond as the other woman knelt in front of him, her fingers plucking deftly at the button of his trousers; a familiar motion. He shifted to give her better access, slopping wine out of his glass in the process. The woman bent to lick it away.

And for a while, they were on top of the world. They were drunk on wine and lust and power, as are all great conquerors, and they could not contain the excited apprehension that charged the air around them as they sat within the walls of their destined kingdom. It would all change tomorrow. Tomorrow, Superjail was theirs.

But there was one last thing to do to prepare.

From his last visit, DL had remembered an important detail. The Warden had given him a full tour of the staff quarters (perhaps hoping that DL might seek him out outside 'office hours'), and there had been one thing that he had carefully stowed in his memory: the robot thing "slept" outside the Warden's door, on some sort of enormous, absurd charger. At the time he had not quite known why that little tidbit of information had seemed so important, but he had good instincts and followed them every time.

And so, around one o' clock in the morning, he snuck quietly into the corridor of the staff's quarters and found Jailbot nestled on his charger outside the Warden's door.

In a flash he unplugged it and was gone.

It was almost light out when they all finally slept, and as they did they dreamed of iron bars and men in wolf costumes and blood.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next morning, a strange tension had thickened the air in the mess hall. The inmates seemed sullen and silent, and eyed one another with particular hatred as they nursed their Styrofoam cups of juice. Many had barely touched their food; some opted to forego the meal altogether and stood near the double doors of the exit, waiting for breakfast to be over so they could get back to their cells.

Alice stood watch over the dining hall, absently tapping the baton she invariably carried with her on her thigh. She has sensed the change in the inmates first thing that morning, and had been glad to get out of the cell block at breakfast. The atmosphere in there had been more stifling and oppressive than she had ever felt it, which—in a place like Superjail—was saying something.

Unfortunately, it was no better in the mess hall; in fact she was more unsettled than ever. It felt like each man had carried a part of the cell block's vibe with them, and now they were all cramped into a smaller space, where things were even more compressed.

And the situation was about to get worse.

She heard the screaming first, then the meaty sounds of blows being exchanged. They came from the food line, which was hidden from her view by a wall (there was no need of surveillance in there; the cafeteria ladies could more than hold their own).

She has halfway to the line, her baton poised, when the lights went out.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

There was pandemonium in the cafeteria, but Jacknife was not particularly bothered; he always felt most at home in the midst of pandemonium. In fact, this was something of a godsend, given what he had been planning to do.

He started moving the second it went dark. Thrusting his arms out in front of him, he felt his way behind the bar and into the kitchen.

There was faint light from the stove burners, and he wasted no time. The knife on the counter that he had spotted while in the breakfast line was right where he last saw it, glinting in the fire light.

And now, it was in his hand.

He stumbled through the blackness, picking his way blindly across the turgid sea of panicked inmates. They batted against one another, and tripped and fell over the bumbling bodies they left in each other's wake. He happily swiped the knife out in front of him, feeling it catch intermittently on wayward hides. His hand quickly became slippery with the knife's castoff. No one knew he had a knife; no one even knew he was there.

Directly to his left, someone screamed, "_It's the end! The end has come! I dreamed it!_"

The man continued to shriek like a firebell, driving the seething throng of terrified men into more of a frenzy (for superstition never seemed as silly in the dark), and Jacknife drove his elbow backward. He was surprised when the blow actually connected, and he felt a snap beneath his elbow. There was a crunching sound, as though someone had stepped upon a bag of pretzels; the shrieking man gave a short squeal of pain and then went silent.

Now Jacknife was positively beaming as he found the locked exit door and waited patiently beside it, stowing the knife and wiping his sticky hand on the inside of his shirt. He was sure to be the first one out and back to his cell; the quicker he got back there and avoided suspicion, the better.

He had big plans.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Warden was literally hat-deep in paperwork.

New legislature came at least once a month, and although it bored him to no end, he felt it to be a bit kinder to the budget to review standard protocol. Just in case.

It wasn't like it mattered in Superjail, of course. Once someone was in Superjail, all bets were off. The entire place was not under the control of a legal system, but of a clearly psychotic, ageless man in a purple suit. It was under his power, both intentional and otherwise, and unfortunately this was Superjail's greatest weakness.

As they all would soon learn.


	6. Diamonds and Rainbows

**Chapter 6: Diamonds and Rainbows**

**Temptation's page flies out the door  
You follow, find yourself at war  
Watch waterfalls of pity roar  
You feel to moan but unlike before  
You discover  
That you'd just be  
One more person crying.**

**-Bob Dylan**

**_______________________________________________________________________________________________________  
**

As did most of his plans, DL Diamond's strategy of unplugging Jailbot worked like a charm.

The robot was investigating an errant heat signature in the wall of one of the storage rooms in the hopes that he might find and kill one of Superjail's equally super rats. Gargantuan and numerous, they were reliably fast and fun to chase, and it was at least twice a week that he detected one of their heat signatures scurrying along inside the walls that were not concrete and followed them, ravenous and with the tunnel-vision of a pursuing predator.

Before he could trace this particular signature, however, Alice's SOS flicked to life in his motherboard and flashed across his positronic brain.

He made it as far as the door before the gyros that aided in his levitation suddenly and collectively powered down, sending Jailbot crashing to the cement floor beneath. Even before he could activate a self-diagnostic his systems began shutting down one by one, and within the space of thirty seconds he lay, completely drained, on the ground, the green pixels of his face the last thing to wink out.

Alice's distress call went on, unheard.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Alice cursed as she thumbed off her communicator. It had been at least a minute and Jailbot had not responded. She tried paging the Warden, but as usual his communicator was not on him, probably stuffed into a drawer somewhere. She knew Jared would be of no use so she jammed the device back into her pocket and regarded the noisy darkness around her.

She was still racking her brain as to what could be done when the backup generators at last kicked on and the cafeteria abruptly burst into light and life.

As she had expected, the dirty gray concrete was littered with fallen inmates, but surprisingly only one inmate was obviously dead. She surveyed him for a moment, regarding the shoeprints on his jumpsuit with the impassivity of a concentration camp veteran, and surmised that he had likely been trampled to death. Others were in various states of injury around the room, many of which were bleeding or limping, but she saw no signs of impending mortality and thanked the fates for small miracles. The inmates that had still been moving around began to stand still as per the rules (another small miracle, though Alice supposed this was probably only because they did not know what to do themselves), and regarded her, blinking, in the harsh glare of the backup lights.

"Stay where you are," she growled, and stomped into the serving area, where the cafeteria workers had recovered from the scare and, amazingly, were cooking again. She moved past the turnstile and into the kitchen. The charred corpse of an inmate, still slightly smoking, lay on the floor half in and half out of the last pantry. "What happened?"

"Two of 'em went at it in the food line," said one of the women; the fattest and oldest of the three, or so it appeared. Her voice reminded Alice of a crow cawing. "Never seen anything like it; I don't know how they got back here, let alone fought in front of us, all the way back there, which is where the circuit board is."

Another unfortunate-looking cafeteria worker could not resist joining in. "One fella threw the other guy into it, and it fried him up faster than Wilhelmina can fry a hushpuppy. Shorted everything out in the process."

The other woman took over again. "We've been trying to get the budget to replace the whole damn thing approved; it's been faulty for a while now and the cover's been missing ever since I worked here. Never imagined this would happen, though."

Alice grunted. "Good luck getting a budget for _anything_ in this fucking place."

"Damn right," agreed another chef. "It's impossible unless whatever it is entertains the Warden."

Three hands immediately clamped themselves over her mouth, courtesy of her coworkers, who were smart enough not to blaspheme the Warden in his own kingdom. Bad things tended to happen if anyone mentioned anything.

"You're crazy," hissed the first chef. "Shut it!"

From five feet away, Alice heard the woman's jaw clamp shut. She couldn't help the small smile that stole across her lips as she herded the inmates back to their cells.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Warden was still in his office, unaware of the passing time, until there came a knock at his door. He cursed as the thoughts on which he had been concentrating fled from his distracted brain like frightened birds from thunder.

"Enter," he grumbled, assuming that Jared had come calling with more bad news for him, or yet another budget crisis.

The door swung open, silent on its hinges, and into his office stepped DL Diamond himself, all sly grin and narrow eyes as he shut the door soundlessly behind him. He had come alone, and was slightly leering at the Warden, who stood speechless and gaping behind his desk.

"I was wondering," said DL, "when we would finally get a moment alone."

The Warden stared, eyes huge, unable to find the presence of mind to form a single coherent thought. He merely watched as DL crossed the room, his footfalls as quiet as a cat's on the cosmic carpet, and oiled up to the massive bayobab wood desk. Now he played up the charm, all coy charisma and sparkling sharp teeth and he closed his hand around the Warden's, deftly plucking the pen from it and taking hold.

The Warden looked down, then up again to DL's eyes, disbelief blanking his still-youthful features as his glasses were gently removed from his face. Now the other man could see his eyes for the first time, no longer tinted by the yellow lenses.

And then DL found himself suddenly and helplessly drawn into them.

They were completely unlike what the had expected. There were no rainbows in those eyes. They were deep and as black as India ink, and they were…_old_, somehow, like the eyes of some ancient and baleful beast. They were completely at odds with the sometimes daft innocence of his face; with the youth that defied time and pulsed like waves of heat from his body and the echo of his voice.

And just like that, for a moment, the tables were suddenly turned.

DL stood, his mouth slightly agape, pinned by those unsettling eyes like an insect transfixed upon a pin. He had not noticed this last time he had come, mainly because he only had eyes for the money he sought and the women who doted upon him. He had not, until now, taken time to look back at the man from whom he strove to victimize for the second time. He was never generally interested at all in his victims, only what they had to give him (or, more accurately, what he had to take).

Eventually, by some inner miracle, he was finally able to wrench his eyes away and down to the hand he was gripping more tightly than intended. He felt the resolve flood back into him and his customary grin slid across his lips again. He looked back up at his intended victim—careful to avoid direct eye contact—and tightened his grip on the Warden's gloved hand.

It was showtime.

"You're amazing, you know," he whispered smoothly, glancing around dramatically as though afraid of eavesdropping. "This whole place… just incredible. And all because of one man. A genius."

The Warden blinked. "…Me?"

"Yes. You." DL patted the hand he still held and moved his body closer until their faces were mere inches apart. "I have a question for you, Warden of Superjail…"

The Warden whispered, "…Okay…"

"Will you come back with me? Back with the Galactoids, I mean. I've been… thinking about it ever since I left the last time. Thinking about _you_. Non stop. And I can't be happy until you're up there," he pointed up with his free hand, "…with me."

The Warden gaped at the man on front of him, flabbergasted and disbelieving. "W-with you? Up…there?"

"Yes, up there," murmured DL soothingly, and then leaned even further foreward until his lips were pressed against the other man's ear. "This place… it keeps us apart. Forget about it all, even if only for a little while; forget about the stress and the chaos. Come with me. I know you want to; I see how you look at me all the time. You want us to be together…and so do I."

The Warden's eyes had glazed over, his head tilted back and his gaze fixed unseeingly on the starry ceiling. A shiver went through him, and DL's grin grew even wider. It was working, but by now he had begun to notice the growing heat deep in his belly. It was the last thing he expected, seeing as this was just for show.

…Wasn't it? Or could he be _enjoying_ this?

Yes. Definitely.

_Just an added bonus_, he quickly assured himself. _At least it's making things more convincing._

The Warden had not yet given him an answer, and it didn't look like he would be able to speak anytime soon. He was breathing lightly through his mouth, shallow and fast like a frightened rabbit.

"Maybe I can help you make up your mind," purred Diamond, and swiftly closed the gap between them, crashing his lips against the Warden's mouth, his pointed teeth roughly claiming the other man's lower lip with a sharp nip.

The Warden stiffened briefly before relenting, and moaned helplessly into DL's grinning mouth. Outside the panoramic window a rainbow streaked like a white hot comet across the cloudless azure sky.

"C'mon," whispered DL huskily, himself succumbing to the moment. "I wanna show you something…"

He gripped the Warden's thin wrist and tugged him none-too-gently toward the door.

"Wait," the Warden gasped out. "My glasses…" his free hand groped for them, his eyes never leaving the man in front of him.

DL huffed, slightly impatient. "Why do you wear those? Those lenses don't look like they're prescription."

"Because," said the Warden, "the world is ugly without them." He slipped them on again with a satisfied sigh.

"I like the way you think," laughed DL, and pulled him out of the room and down the hall. The Warden followed blindly and without resistance. The only thing that currently existed was the man who was gripping his hand and trembling with exhilaration.

Of only he had realized that the other man's joy was not because of him.

And now only a short corridor stood between DL Diamond and his dreams.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_If you hit that little purple 'review' button, you'll automatically be entered in a contest to win six krillion dollars, two-thirds of my soul, and a pair of David Wain's underpants._


	7. Blotting Out the Sun

_A.N: Take a knee, all._

_Wanted to apologize for how tardy this chapter's been. Your reviews are what convinces me to stay up an extra hour or two during midterms to write on it, so thanks for that. So if things get tardy just know that I'm workin' on it, I'm just mad busy right now._

_-S.D._

**Chapter 7: Blotting Out the Sun.**

**While them that defend what they cannot see  
With a killer's pride, security  
It blows the minds most bitterly  
For them that think death's honesty  
Won't fall upon them naturally  
Life sometimes  
Must get lonely.**

Another day, another problem. Jared was thankful that the end of his shift was growing near; surprisingly the finances seemed to be in order and all he had to bother the Warden about was the simple signing of a few papers.

But the Warden was not in his office.

It was not unusual for the Warden not to answer Jared's usual timid knock on his office door. He was always listening to his DL Diamond tapes. Some time ago Jared had noticed that they seemed to temporarily remove his employer from reality (or the closest thing to reality in this bizarre world). He would be calmer for some time after, and didn't snap as much at Jared, who was reluctant to admit that DL Diamond did in fact put his boss in a better mood and lessened Jared's own stress by proxy.

But today, he was not sitting at his desk with his headphones on. He was nowhere to be seen.

_This is bad_, thought Jared. _I don't know why, but it is._

He walked tentatively around the Warden's desk; maybe he was meditating on the floor. No luck. Frowning, he set the small stack of papers on the desk's massive top, looking out of the panoramic window as he did so; out over the majestic prison grounds and the sprawling expanse of sky above. The sun was setting, sending its orange rays out to bloody the cotton clouds that skidded lazily on the eddies of the wind.

But something was not right. Jared looked down at his watch, his frown growing ever deeper as he inspected the readout.

Four o' clock, pm.

It was four in the afternoon, and the sun was setting.

_My God, something's happened_, he thought, and he slapped the button on his communicator, trying the Warden's channel first. Nothing. He tried all of his contacts within the prison, one by one, but still his communicator remained as silent of the rest of his surroundings.

He had to resist the implacable urge to hurl it across the room, and instead shoved it into his pocket along with his growing panic and stood in the middle of the office, unable to decide what to do. The only thing of which he seemed capable was to stare out of the window into that violent sunset.

The sky—and Jared's hope—grew ever darker.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In one of the cell blocks, Alice was having troubles of her own. She had never been bested before, ever. And most certainly _not_ by any inmate.

Except for now, as she stood inside Jacknife's cell, a butcher knife at her throat.

Jacknife's cellmate, a perfectly massive individual, had somehow gotten the jump on her as she entered the cell to inspect Jacknife, who had lain on the floor and faked a seizure to draw the prison guard into the tiny space. And she had indeed opened the cell, simultaneously pondering whether she'd rather help him or hurt him further.

_Maybe a few kicks to his ribs will help me decide_, she thought as she threw back the sliding steel door. She spotted Jacknife writhing on the floor and took a step in towards him, her lips poised to threaten him.

And then the lights went out again.

The darkness had only lasted for about ten seconds, much shorter a time than in the cafeteria, but it was enough; the men inside the cell were already moving toward her as she groped blindly for the cell door. She was quickly overpowered by strong, wiry arms, and she had not had a chance to really retaliate when the lights snapped on again. Again she was momentarily blinded, and now she was pinned fast; the inmate bore down on the blade hard enough to draw a rivulet of blood from the skin beneath, shoving her foreward from behind with his body, trapping her against the wall as Jacknife yanked her keys off her belt and shimmied out of the cell.

His cellmate quickly withdrew the knife, shoving Alice foreward as he dashed out of the cell after Jacknife, who slammed the door shut behind him with a whoop.

She was trapped.

Alice roared with rage, hurling herself against the iron bars with a resounding crash. She was blinded yet again; this time by the white-hot vortex of fury that consumed her from within like an imploding star.

Nearly ten minutes passed before she realized that her communicator was still in her pocket.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

DL's room was almost pitch black, and the Warden blinked, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. There was music playing somewhere, but the volume was low and the Warden could hardly hear anything over the beating of his heart.

He stepped further into the room, looking round for sources of light. DL closed the door behind them as quietly as a mouse and slipped off into where it was too dark to see. Finally the Warden's groping hand found the light switch. He thumbed it.

A lamp on the opposite side of the room flicked on, providing very little light to the side they occupied. It was better than it had been before, anyway.

DL's hands were on his back, prodding him further into the room. The Warden revelled in the touch, as little as it was, and his baffled expression was quickly melting into something quite unlike how he usually appeared to others. His eyes were hooded and dreamy, and a growingly hungry grin was spreading across his face. He didn't feel nervous any longer, because he knew it was meant to be. His fantasy was slowly coming true. DL wanted _him_, and only a marriage proposal from Alice would have been able to distract him in the slightest.

He was hypnotized. He worshiped this man. Wanted to be close to him, to _be_ him. To be the _only man_ that could break down his own defences one by one.

He stopped walking, and DL halted at his side. They slowly turned to face one another.

"DL," said the Warden.

"What's buggin' ya?" Diamond's voice held a facet of impatience.

The Warden took a breath, held it, and then let it go. "Some of my…my staff tried to tell me that you were the one… who robbed us. I told them you'd never do that, that I understood you…maybe like I've never understood anybody before. But…you didn't did you?"

Smiling, DL moved in so close that their faces were almost touching, and as he did the Warden took off his glasses and they were suddenly eye to eye again. Diamond forced his gaze away, unable to look into them again, not with what he was about to do.

He felt his smile return. It stretched until his pointed teeth gleamed, and through it he hissed into the Warden's face, "You don't understand me at all, pardner."

His eyes lifted over the Warden's shoulder. He murmured, "but I understand suckers like you."

The dull shock on the Warden's face had barely registered before something heavy crunched into the back of his head and he was sucked down into a fathomless darkness.

Somewhere far above him, the earth shook again. It rattled the iron bones of the prison for a brief period, and then everything went still.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Haa, David Wain was just on the Tim & Eric Awesome Show. 3_


	8. Bedlam

_Super sorry for the wait, friends. Midterms, doncha know._

_Will try to update more frequently, providing I don't die of a homework overdose first._

_-S.D._

**Chapter 8: Bedlam**

**Although the masters make the rules  
For the wise men and the fools  
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.**

**-Bob Dylan**

**_________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
**

Alice was not faring well in her new confinement.

First, she had exorcised her rage on the cell bars. When the communicator finally clattered from her pocket and onto the floor she had stared stupidly at it for several moments as her brain, thrown off by her fit, caught up with her eyeballs. Then she bent and snatched it from the ground, mashing her fingers on the buttons. This time, she sent her SOS to everyone in her network, including Jared.

He was the only one to answer, and he sounded like Alice felt.

"I'm locked in a cell," she growled. "B wing. Keys are gone. You gotta come down here with a master and pop the lock."

"W-what _happened_?"

"Later," she grunted. "I'll tell you later. Stop fucking around and get down here before I--"

Jared continued screeching, not hearing her. "Alice, the Warden's gone! I tried to look for him but m-most of the doors are locked! The rest of the comm lines are broken!"

"I had no luck, either. Whatever, Jailbot will fix it. Where is he?"

"I don't know! I went looking for the Warden and I found the charger unplugged! I tried to link him but he won't answer!" Jared's normally panicked shriek had gone up several octaves with fear, _real_ fear. Alice felt the familiar twinge in her gut that always accompanied disaster and knew that this was not simply Jared panicking; something was most definitely wrong. She closed her eyes and let out a breath, centering herself.

"Listen," she said. "Two inmates are free. Things are starting to get out of hand. Come with the master key and open this lock, but watch your back. And be _quiet_ about it."

"O-okay, Alice." She heard him clear his throat and realized that the man had to be nearly mindless with terror. She willed him not to simply die of fright-- after all, Jared's already-stressed arteries were encrusted with years worth of Double Chubs and Jack Daniels.

"Maintain radio silence," Alice demanded. "For both our sakes."

"Roger. I'm going," he whispered, and she heard the frequency hiss as it severed, separating them again.

Not thirty seconds later, the lights on the cell block again flickered out. This time they didn't come back on.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Warden awoke to the smell of coppery champagne.

At first it was the only thing he sensed, but he slowly came around to something resembling full consciousness. He felt cold; the back of his head felt wet, as did the upper parts of his back and shoulders. It felt like someone had dumped a glass of syrup onto his head.

Then he heard voices.

"Fuck, Sharpie!" It was DL's voice. "Didja _have_ to hit him with the champagne bottle? I was gonna drink that!

"Shut up," came the low reply. "You can have all the champagne you want when this place belongs to us."

"The place is already ours, or haven't you noticed?" DL demanded. "We took the Warden, for crap's sake."

"This place," said Sharp, "will be ours when he's dead."

The Warden felt a kick to his lower back and realized that he was lying on the floor. More precisely, he was lying on the carpet. DL's sullen voice came from somewhere above him.

"Well, I just hope you didn't hit him too hard. He's no good to us with his brains leaking out."

"Don't question me," Sharp hissed. "Don't _ever_, or I'll fuck you up even more than him. Don't you dare think I wouldn't, Diamond."

"Okay, okay. Take it easy."

"He'll be fine, okay? I've had…_experience_ with this type of thing. Wait, he's awake."

A moment later the Warden found himself staring into Mr. Sharp's face. The man's breath smelled like the cinnamon pinwheel candies that he kept stashed in a drawer of the bayobab desk.

"Well hello, Rainbows. How's it goin' down here?"

The Warden moaned.

"Not too good, eh?" said Sharp, and winked. "Don't worry, fella, the end is near enough. You can take steps to make this faster by telling us the access code for the control panel in your desk."

The Warden moaned again, and felt himself lifted by the back of his shirt. His legs dangled.

"Don't remember, huh? Here, let's go refresh your memory. Help me carry him, DL."

"Damn it," Diamond muttered under his breath, and grabbed the Warden's collar. He felt himself dragged along; felt himself bump over doorjambs and clip corners. Suddenly he was lifted higher, and before he could comprehend what was going on he was slammed down onto the hard, flat surface of his desk.

His vision exploded with white fireworks, body spasming with pain.

This had to be another bad dream. Just another night terror, nothing that the Rainbow Book couldn't fix. All he had to do was wake up.

He tried, but need not have wasted the effort. He tried desperately to wake himself before realizing that his dreams had never hurt this much. Blood drooled from his lower lip onto the desk's glossy finish. He felt his arms twisted behind his back, but he was too dazed to scream. He lay with his jaw slack and his cheek resting against the cool surface of the desk, eyes glassy and ill-focused.

"Remember _this_?" growled Sharp. "Get a good look at it. Now give me the access code, Rainbows, or I'm gonna _getcha_." He twisted his fingers into the Warden's short black hair, lifted, and then slammed his face down again.

"Fuck," Diamond said shakily, "don't kill him before he can give us the code, man. Okay?"

Before Sharp could reply, the ground below them heaved.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jared was on the narrow walkway when the earthquake hit.

He grasped frantically at the railings as the walkway swayed and creaked, willing himself not to let his terror freeze his limbs. He kept moving as the earth jerked and jolted beneath him, reaching the doorway of cell bloke one just as he heard the glass in the housing unit begin to shatter. Something toppled and fell on the other side of the door leading to the cells, and try as he might Jared could not push it away enough to get the door open.

All he had in the tower was the main control panel. His master key was useless, and it looked like the lights had shut off. He could not get to the individual cell to open it; his only choice was to hit the Master Disarm switch, which would open all the cells on the block.

_What do I do?!_ he thought frantically. The dilemma scrolled rapidly through his head, _whatdoIdowhatdoIdowhatdoIDO?!_

He skipped over his choices like a ball skipped around a roulette wheel, and finally settled on unlocking the cells. If anyone could hold their own against three-hundred inmates, Alice could. He prayed that it was only the lights that were shut off in the cell block, and dashed back to the control panel.

He fumbled over the buttons as he tried to enter the override code. He could barely see the backlit numbers in the darkness, and cursed. It took him three tries before the red Override light blipped to life. The tumblers of the cell door tracks thundered as each cell opened, and a collective shriek of delight rang off the metal and mortar of the block.

Jared's mouth was dryer than it had ever been in his life. He whirled toward the exit and the walkway beyond, but as he reached the jamb he froze.

The walkway was collapsing.

He was forced to stand and watch as it broke apart and continued to disintegrate even after the shaking had stopped. The pieces of concrete, metal, and glass that had dislodged during the quake were pulled the rest of the way down by gravity. The noise was unbelievable.

Eventually Jared's mind swam into focus.

Of course. _The stairwell_.

It led down onto the first floor of the cell block, opening into a small panic room that was barred from the rest of the cell block by a thick leaden door. If he could manage to get from the room to the door that led to the yard he'd be home free.

It wasn't far. He could make it. He had to.

Jared took a breath, grabbed the rabbit's foot he kept on his key ring, and stepped out onto the stairs.


	9. Chess

_Going slowly, I know. I'm not even gonna get started._

_Enjoy._

_-SD_

**Chapter 9: Chess**

**For them that must obey authority**

**That they do not respect in any degree**

**Who despise their jobs, their destinies**

**Speak jealously of them that are free**

**Cultivate their flowers to be**

**Nothing more than something**

**They invest in.**

**-Bob Dylan**

**___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
**

Elsewhere, Jacknife and his former cell mate were riding out the storm.

Thankfully they managed to get out of the air ducts before the quake. The power outage had helped them stay concealed, though Jacknife was constantly craning to look behind him, as though afraid that the robot whom he dreaded would be squeezed into the passage, right on his tail. He was no doubt already feeling Jailbot's retaliation should it catch up with them, prompting him to move quickly and constantly as the man beside him panted and lagged farther and farther behind.

He felt like he was in a dream world. Like a hellish Alice in Wonderland where the white rabbit was a white robot, and it only ran because it was chasing someone. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were two evil, blond, identical twin…_things_, the Queen of Hearts was really a King of Hearts in the uniform of a female prison guard, and the Cheshire Cat had a gap in his teeth and blood in his whiskers.

But it was no fairy tale. In fairy tales, no one ever killed the lights.

Unfortunately the loss of power also meant that most of the automatic doors were sealed shut and would not open, even with a key. So far the two inmates had been lucky, finding doors which had been open at the time of the outage and were thus stuck in their upward positions. After slamming shut their cell door they scattered like roaches from a porch light, dashing for cover and finally finding it in the form of a small back office that had been converted into storage space. They scrambled over the stacks of boxes and up into the pounding air ducts, one of Jacknife's prison slip-ons grazing the other man's jaw as he hoisted himself. There was a brief struggle as he yanked Jacknife to the ground and tried to hit him, but it was over nearly as soon as it had started. Panic pushed them both foreward and they resumed their exit.

Being inside of the air ducts unnerved Jacknife; the combination of the turbine noise and the hooting of the other inmates bounced off the steel sides and created a cocoon of racket that rattled the two men's teeth in their skulls. There was simply no way to hear anyone or anything approaching them, and soon they were unable to stand the risk any longer and dropped out of the next fan panel into what appeared to be a large property locker.

Both men landed already running, and bolted for the doorway. They had travelled two-thirds across the room when Jacknife's cellmate, who was leading, suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

Jacknife crashed full tilt into the man in front of him, painfully mashing his nose and sending him reeling back. He stumbled in his too-large prison shoes and went down on his ass, his eyes watering from the jolt to his tailbone. He quickly scrambled up, prepared for a brawl, but stopped as he noticed that his cellmate stood stock-still, eyes foreward, mouth open slackly, finger pointing ahead. Distracted from his rage, Jacknife's eyes followed where the finger pointed. He craned around his cellmate, grunting that he couldn't see. His cellmate's finger pointed down; finally Jacknife saw what it was pointing at, and screamed.

Jailbot.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Warden had stopped being afraid some time ago. He had stopped feeling anything, emotional or physical, some time ago. The shock made him numb, incredibly numb.

After DL had said those things to him… those _things_ to _him_, the same man who had obsessed over Diamond from the very moment of hearing one of his tapes…well, nothing had really mattered after that. He didn't care that his prison was under attack. He was blank; didn't care about anything, not even when Sharp had beaten him.

And continued to beat him.

When he felt satisfied he dragged the lighter man by the back of his collar down the hall and back into the guest quarters where they were holed up. DL had followed nervously behind and bolted the door shut behind him as Sharp dropped the Warden onto the cream coloured carpet.

He lay still where he landed. He felt like something huge and unseen was sitting on his chest, pressing him further into the ground. He heard the echo of voices and didn't bother to figure out what they were saying, but he did hear the rumble of thunder outside and felt it rattle the building. For some unspeakable reason the sound of it saddened him, and he finally passed from consciousness with strangely iridescent tears leaking down the sides of his face and into his hair, listening to the rain begin to hammer down onto the roofs of his home.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Diamond refused to admit to himself that it was guilt that had prompted him to walk over to the Warden and peer down at him.

The man lay on his back, long limbs askew. His hat was gone and his head was surrounded by a wet corona of blood that had soaked into the carpet, eyes staring through the cracked yellow lenses and through everything else as well. He panted shallowly because his broken ribs flared when he moved his chest to breathe. The iridescent tracts of tears were drying on his face.

He looked close to death.

DL looked over at Sharp, who was now busying himself with the files he had stolen from inside the Warden's desk. "I thought we need to keep him alive in order for us to get to the access codes."

"He's fine," Sharp said dismissively, leafing through paperwork.

He didn't look fine to DL. He looked like he was dying. But DL knew better than to press the issue and stepped over the man on the floor and into the bathroom, where for the next two hours he would try and wash as much of this day off of him as he could.

_But it's not because I'm guilty_, he reminded himself. He had done far worse in his depraved life. _I'm just…bloody. The things I do for money…_

…_Fuck._

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Alice, in all her unknowable glory, had yet again lived up to her reputation and picked the lock on the door of the cell.

After her conversation with Jared she had quickly decided that she did not want to wait until the accountant made it to her, if he ever made it to the cell block at all. She had plucked a bobby pin from her fiery hair and twisted it skillfully between her blunt fingers before shoving it into the lock on the cell door. The lock gave quickly and she stifled a joyful whoop, darting her eyes around to the jeering inmates in her field of view. They had not notcied her success and continued to jibe and laugh at the supposed turning of the tables.

Alice didn't mind; she would punish later. Amidst the racous laughter she looked around at the inmates in her line of vision, grinned, and pushed the cell door open.

Suddenly, the cell block fell quiet.

Still grinning, she exited onto the main floor and headed down a hallway toward the property room, where the heavy artillery lay in lockers that only opened for her.

She was halfway down the hallway when the door of the property room burst open, and Alice came face to face with two very terrifed inmates.

They locked eyes, and one of the inmates immediately put his hands up, not wanting anything to do with the prison guard's ire. However, as he did so, his former cell mate saw his opportunity, grabbing the man and shoving him toward Alice with all of his might. Alice instinctively seized the man as the other inmate dodged around her and sprinted down the hallway, skidding on the slick floor as he darted into another hallway, this time headed for the room that held the stairs that led up to the control room.

Alice cursed and dragged the other man back to his cell, throwing him in as hard as she could. He stumbled forward and fell heavily, hitting his chin on the concrete floor and immediately blacking out. She slammed the door shut behind him and turned, eyes scanning, but she could not see Jacknife anywhere.

Her jaw set, Alice turned and headed back down the hallway toward the property room.

It was time for the big guns.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jared was lucky. The stairwell held sturdy for the duration of both quakes, and aside from a long, thin crack running from the stairwell to the doorjamb below the structure remained steady. Still, he held the rabbit's foot in a deathgrip as he descended, his small, hard-soled shoes tapping loudly on the concrete. It provided a beat to the mantra is his head.

_GonnamakeitgonnamakeitgonnamakeitgonnamakeitMADEIT!_

Sucess. He stood before the thick leaden door that seperated him from the cell block, and eyed the small keypad next to the handle.

"Okay," he murmured, and entered his employee code.

Nothing happened.

He chewed his lower lip, thinking hard. There was an auxilliary code that the Warden often used to lock doors that were crucial for containment. He had never shared it with Jared, but he most certainly would have shared it with Alice.

Jared's finger hovered over the call button on his communicator as he argued with himself whether or not he should break radio silence. His heart raced rampant in his chest, his throat dry and catching. The blood sang keenly in his head as he shut his eyes, gritted his teeth, and hit the call button.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

She had just found the key she needed to open the weapon lockers when the communicator blipped into life and she heard Jared's voice, still panicked, crackle over the transmission.

"Alice, I'm in the stairwell! I can't get past the barricade door; I don't have the code! Do you have it?"

"Just stay there," she returned. "Don't do anything stupid. I'm coming to get you. Then you and me are gonna get a spare power cell from the Doctor."

"To go recharge Jailbot," said Jared, realizing.

Alice merely grunted and terminated the signal without waiting to hear Jared's opinion of this new plan. She continued to load herself and two duffell bags full of guns and ammunition. She exited the supply locker with a handgun in her left hand, a bulllet already chambered, and walked almost casually across the housing unit's concrete floor. The inmates had fallen mostly silent, probably because Alice was no longer locked up, and she noticed that they all looked so dejected to see her back in her place. She smirked and continued on until she reached the metal door.

She would never have admitted to anyone that she was having fun, even though she was..


	10. Finding Strength

**Chapter 10: Finding Strength**

_A question in your nerves is lit_

_Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy_

_Insure you not to quit_

_To keep it in your mind and not forget_

_That it is not he or she or them or it_

_That you belong to._

Bob Dylan

Outside, something was happening.

It was as though the earth and the sky were beginning to melt. The sky was the color of freshly skinned muscle tissue, marbled with orange light and white specs of what might have been light. The trees had begun to droop and lose their leaves, the bark slowly turning a dusty black and peeling up like parchment paper. A restless, shifting wind was brought up, lifting the drying earth and flinging it harshly at the buildings, scouring them. The earth now trembled every hour or so, and the quakes were getting stronger; strong enough to send many of the freed inmates scurrying back into their cells, believing that their escape had provoked the Warden's ire and he would relent when they turned back. The sight of Alice storming across the housing unit's ground floor with her arms full of firepower sent any stragglers cowering into the nearest open cell, made daft and submissive by fright.

Only one person in Superjail knew this strange world well enough to know what the signs meant. The earthquakes, the strange transformation of sun and sky and life, the blackouts...

Jared knew that the Warden was dying. The small, nervous man in these moments had never felt more helpless, more _useless_, in his entire life. He sat dejected on the last step, still imprisoned in the stairwell, waiting for Alice and praying that she had made better progress than he. When he at last heard the tumblers in the door lock he scrambled to his feet, releasing a choked sob of relief that had been trapped in the back of his throat.

Alice pushed through the leaden door as though it weighed only ounces, flinging it open with such force that it nearly took Jared with it. He leapt back, tripping on the last stair and going down on his backside, eyes huge with relief and awe at the sight of Alice in her topmost form, brandishing sundry weapons as though she had been waiting for the chance to unload them on whomever she could.

"C'mon, Shorty," she grunted, seizing Jared by his collar and hauling him to his feet.

The Doctor's lab was across the grounds, past the cell blocks and behind the offices. An underground tunnel led there from the cell blocks, scooped out of the earth to facilitate the Doctor's insatiable need for new specimens on which to conduct experiments, but Jared and Alice knew better than to risk moving underground in case more earthquakes were in their future. Instead they raced back onto the first floor of the cell block and out the side door that led to the yard, Alice running full tilt and Jared struggling to keep up, puffing and blowing and regretting the extra portions he'd been in the habit of taking at dinner.

Around them, the world continued to fall apart.

The Warden was somewhere far away from the darkening world in which his body lay. He drifted, everything soundless and somehow absent of temperature. Strange snatches from this other world, like photographs, passed through his vision. His eyes remained unmoving, un-tracking; passively observing. Colors and people, the smell of his father's cigars, rainbows and the iridescence of diamonds.

But there was something else, too. Something that roiled and churned below the surface of everything like the lava in the volcano that housed the strange dimension of Superjail.

Rage.

It was subtle at first, melding with the other sensations he felt, but slowly it was becoming intensely pervasive, seeping slowly into every fibre of his being, just as his blood seeped into the fibres of the cheap carpet on which he lay. Tremors were beginning to course through him as the earthquakes coursed through Superjail; though he had anticipated the blackness on the edges of his vision to eventually envelop him, it instead began to change to the color of blood, the same color of the of the ire beneath his suffering body and mind, pervasive and powerful. So powerful...

He saw in his mind's eye his father, fallen to such a bizarre and preventable death. As a child the Warden had no presence of mind to reject this kind of death for himself, but now he lay, in a similarly preposterous position, with no prodigal son to inherit and expand his fantastic empire. Despite the emotions, the anger, he had lost a lot of blood, his body broken and bruised, and was beginning to feel complacent with the idea of death.

His mind screamed at him—_fight_!—but he could find no reason to do so.

Suddenly, out of the deep pit of nothing in his head, a voice emerged.

_**You are bleeding.**_

The Warden physically started at this new, booming entity. He had no idea where it had come from; perhaps some deep subterranean cavern of his soul, come to surface at his most desperate hour. He hoped so, and so he lay quiet, waiting for it to come again. Listening.

_**You will die soon if you do not find a way to survive.**_

_Why should I,_ thought the Warden, _when there's nothing left of me to save_?

_**Superjail cannot exist without you. Save your legacy and your friends. Survive.**_

The unknown voice had a point. Superjail was his legacy, his birthright, and to take it from him was nothing less than stealing. He thought of Jared and hoped he was alive. Alice's face appeared unbidden in his mind and he prayed that she was still fighting, and desperately hoped his robot was still functional.

It was the motivation he needed. Somewhat grudgingly he heeded the inner voice, and began to search within himself to find the strength to fight off his injuries, and wake up and fight. He desperately looked inward, feeling as though he were lifting the coverlet of a bed housing a terrible monster, forcing himself to look even in the deep dark places where he was scared to tread. He sustained his efforts as relentlessly as he could, and after what seemed like an age he found himself beginning to have visions. Seen as though through his physical eyes, the landscape of his soul began to materialize around him. He began to make vague sense of things; there were objects strewn about this land of dust; shapeless, many dark and shrivelled, some scattered and some clumped. One object to his left had the formless outline of what might have once been a rabbit, now charred nearly to ash.

He saw the skeletons of trees that once were lush with life, and a dank pit of black sludge that might have been a clean, untainted waterscape in a former life. He stood within himself, looking around, awed and vaguely sad. He wondered what strength would look like in this place, and how he would even begin to look for it.

This was a dark place, its landscape in perpetual dusk. All the surfaces were coated with an odd black ash; as the Warden scraped at the ground with his foot, he saw that there was grass growing, but was well into the process of smothering under the ash. He felt a slight, dank breeze, and a moment later heard the soft trill of a wind chime. The sound struck something deep within him, and he suddenly jerked back, realizing.

This was the place he used to go when he listened to DL Diamond's tapes. His former eden.

The earth below the Warden seemed to shiver, and he felt a stab of emotion when he realized what DL had done to him, and how this beautiful place he loved had been hatched from an enormous nest of lies. As things began to clot together in his mind, he felt the earth tremble again, and felt the ash rain down on his shoulders. He breathed in, expecting to choke. It tasted smoky, like his father's kisses had tasted when he was young. He found the ash pleasurable in his lungs.

Unexpectedly, the rage that had been simmering beneath his hurt suddenly filled him, and he held out a hand to catch the ash. It was the embodiment his smouldering fury, raining down on him, and when it began to mix with his hot tears the smoky ichor became an elixir of strength.

He opened his mouth and let it pour in.

Alice and Jared made it to the Doctor's laboratory before another earthquake hit. Just as they entered the main room the earth jolted, less sharply than before but more pervasive, rolling through the layers of earth like a rocky tide, shifting and insidious. The atmosphere had changed as well, becoming less oppressive and more electrified; if Jared inhaled deeply enough he could smell the ozone in the air, as though he were standing in a field in the middle of a lightning storm.

The Doctor was nowhere to be seen, perhaps having fled Superjail as the chaos began. Alice appeared unconcerned, tearing through the doctor's strange cabinets in search of Jailbot's emergency power supply, cursing as each one yielded nothing. Finally, as the unsearched cupboards were growing sparse, Jared heard a triumphant grunt and turned from his fretful observance of the empty specimen cells to see Alice holding the power pack under one rippling arm. She was already heading for the door, and Jared dashed after her, struggling to keep up on his short legs.

As they entered the hallway that would eventually open up above ground, a crackling hiss drew both their attention behind them, just in time to see a white ball of light whip past them, sizzling and sparking blue. It illuminated the dark hall nearly to the end before fizzling out and leaving nothing but the acrid scent of ozone in its wake.

Alice turned to Jared, dumbfounded. "What the fuck was that?"

"I...I think it was ball lightning," wheezed Jared. "I can't believe it didn't hit us! We need to get out of here before it happens again. We may not be so lucky the next time!"

But Alice was already moving, approaching a full-tilt run, and Jared again scrambled to keep up. They covered the length of the tunnel in a matter of seconds, and Alice flung open the door that led to the open grounds. She turned to Jared and for a brief moment, as lightning flashed above, he saw the shine of sweat on her brow and the glint of light on her face— the shine of battle and of the exhilaration that only comes with a soul-deep bloodthirst. Her teeth glinted in the unnatural light as she spoke.

"Let's go, Shorty."

DL and Sharpe were unaware of the changes that were occurring in Superjail. They had come to ignore the routine earthquakes, and both were so busy ransacking the staff's private quarters that they had not looked outside. DL had occupied himself with trying to pry some of the diamonds from the walls and floor. When he wasn't hunting for more of the tiny stones, he was hunched over one of them with a screwdriver in hand, grunting like a Neanderthal.

In the meantime, Sharpe was busy with the Warden's personal quarters, plowing his way through desks, dressers, and wardrobes, trying to coax more plunder from Superjail's iron belly. He was having very little luck.

"God_damn_ this fucking palace of crap!" he finally screeched, and turned over yet another chest of drawers so that its invaluable contents spilled and scattered over the carpet. "It must take a veritable fortune to run this damn place and I can't find where that bastard's keeping it any of it!"

DL groaned. "Well, some of it's in the walls. And the floor. You check that out yet?"

"I don't care about those. It's a measly fraction of what he has in here, I know it. You're wasting your time, Diamond."

"Well, it seems like I have plenty of it while you're tearin' the place apart lookin' for treasure, Sharpie," DL shot back. Instantly he regretted it and cringed, expecting to bear the brunt of Sharpe's unpredictable wrath, but the older man had again busied himself with the sundry collections of drawers in the Warden's quarters.

Neither man had any idea of what was to come.

A/N: _Yeah, it's been a long time. Longer than long, and the chapter's not as long as I'd like it to be. I haven't had any time to write; this one chapter has taken me almost 6 months to complete. Such is life. But I love this damn story too much to let it sit unfinished. Stay tuned for more._


	11. The Show Must Go On

**Chapter 11: The Show Must Go On**

_Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn_

_Suicide remarks are torn_

_From the fool's gold mouthpiece_

_The hollow horn plays wasted words_

_Proves to warn_

_That he not busy being born_

_Is busy dying._

Bob Dylan

The Warden had awakened.

He lay on the floor, still as death, listening to the rampaging of his personal quarters by the creatures he himself had permitted entry into Superjail. And although he took some pleasure in the muttered curses that had become the predominant sound in his hazy world, he lay mostly seething in his anger, waiting as the strength began to build up within him. His brain felt like a hot and throbbing wound; angry, fevered, even crazed.

"I told you he was worthless!" screamed Sharp from somewhere in an adjacent room.

Soon, he would change this.

"We can't get into the building going the front way," panted Jared as they ran full-tilt toward the building in question, where they knew their Warden was being kept. "We have to find another way!"

"Air ducts," said Alice after a moment's time. "You're the only one who can fit. You'll have to do it."

"But I..."

She shoved the power pack into his arms before he had the presence of mind to object. "Take this. Find Jailbot, get to him."

"What about you?"

She smirked. "Gotta get the inmates under control before we're in a riot. Then we'll be in even more trouble."

"B-but Alice! I n-need you here! I can't do this on my own!"

She ignored him, turning her back to him to face the yard. Getting ready.

Jacknife never made it to the control room. He had been met by the leaden door and, after pounding impotently on it for several minutes, he began considering his other options. If he could get to the Warden's office he could reach the control panel there and open the gates; he had been inside the Warden's office and knew damn well that if he ever made it in there, life would be grand. After the scare with Jailbot, who apparently was somehow dead, or as dead as a machine could be, he realized that it was the blessing he'd been waiting for.

There was no other choice for it. It was up to the air ducts again to be his salvation.

He clambered in, thumping and scraping and grunting, the knife with which he had used to escape still shoved into his jumpsuit pocket from when he had taken it from his unfortunate partner.

Jared managed to climb up onto a file cabinet and into the duct, panting partly with effort and partly because of raw panic. Things were happening too fast. With Alice gone, his task seemed momentous. He couldn't take this.

He knew, though, that he had to take it. He had to go with it and run. He had to protect what had become his home. He checked his watch and used the feature on it that enabled him to track Jailbot. After a few blips, his screen indicated a green dot in one of the property lockers.

_Aha_! Triumph welled up within him. He now had a direction, a better purpose. He steeled his nerves and followed the signal into the loud dark before and around him.

The Warden had drifted off again, somewhere in dreamland, searching for something. Searching for the strength to support his newfound rage. He felt dejected and defeated despite his anger, and wandered in his dream world aimlessly and restlessly.

And then something came to him.

It was a vision, as though he were watching a grainy old film. He saw a group of people milling around a woman, who, he realized with a start, was his mother. Mouth agape, he watched.

She was trying to stand up to the men in prison uniforms that had cornered her against a wall somewhere in the Yard. The Warden could tell by the set of her jaw and her tightly crossed arms that she expected trouble and was trying to be brave. Somewhere far away he could hear his father shouting.

It happened quickly after that. Three of the men lurched forward, seizing her. A fourth proceeded to knock her to the ground and forced himself upon her, ignoring her thrashing and struggling. It didn't take long. The men took quick turns with her, knowing her husband the Warden was coming their way as quickly as he could. There was no guard present in the guard tower; the turret sat empty.

They yanked her to her feet again, and she willingly complied, broken and surrendered. It took only a moment for one of the men to come up behind her and snap her neck.

It was only then that his father reached the yard, sidearm in hand, and proceeded to open fire into the crowd that had gathered, firing randomly, screaming and weeping and red with rage. They scattered, several left where they had fallen dead. The Prison Mogul fell upon his wife's body and screamed. It was then that three guards finally materialized from out of the cell block, alerted by the gunshots. Two of them implemented crowd control while the third seized his father and hauled him bodily away from the corpse of his wife.

The Warden's breath had stopped in his throat, his eyes wide. They had defeated his father and laid waste to his mother.

The Bad Men had won, just as his father had told him as a child.

"No," he whispered, and the sound was real. It brought him back to himself. It had also opened a realization within him: one of the men's faces had been familiar. He thought, hard, and stifled a cry when he finally put a name to the face.

It was Mr. Sharpe. A much younger Mr. Sharp with a duck's-ass haircut and sleeves ripped off to reveal muscular arms. He had been the first to assault his mother, and had been the one to snap her neck.

Strangely, no rage came, but rather a cold fear that seeped into him at the thought of confronting the man who had killed his mother and who was now so close to him, about to take over his prison. He fought swells of panic as a boat fights the swells of a tumultuous sea.

"Mother," he whispered.

Suddenly, she answered him.

He heard her voice from the last tatters of his dream world that clung to his consciousness, and he grasped at it like a drowning man.

_You are the Warden_, she whispered. _You are my son. You can make the bad men stop._

"I want to!" he cried, startling the other two men in his quarters. "I want to but I'm not strong enough!"

"Guy's goin' crazy," muttered D.L. Diamond. He turned to Sharpe. "I think you messed up his brains, man."

"All the easier for us," his colleague answered, and he resumed his shuffling through records, searching, searching.

_Bring them down_, said his mother. _You have your father's strength, and something more. They cannot overpower you if you are bigger than them._

"I don't understand!" wailed the Warden. He strained desperately to hear more, but nothing more came. He became aware that he was fully conscious now. His mother's presence had withdrawn, leaving an ache in her place. He looked around from his prone position on the floor. Sharpe was at his baobab desk, holding a sheet of paper in his hand.

"Got something!" he exclaimed.

"Got what?" called Diamond from the Warden's bedroom.

"Passwords," he said, "and some codes. At the very least we might be able to have a little fun."

"What do you mean?"

"This code," said Sharpe, waving the paper, "is a master code. It unlocks all the cells."

"What would you want to do that for?"

Sharpe grunted. "You don't know much about me, Diamond, but let's just say I've been in their position. I want to set them free."

Diamond appeared in the doorway, shrugging. "I just want the money, man. It's your cakewalk."

"Damn right it is," said Sharpe, and laughed.

It was to Jared's great misfortune that he collided with Jacknife in the airway ducts.

He had been running along in the dark, his footsteps booming, breath panting. Jacknife was doing the same thing, headed for Jared, and they bumped into each other, eliciting surprised yelps from both men. And then Jared saw the knife in the other man's hand.

Jared reeled back, screaming, the knife sticking an inch into his eye. His spasming hand dropped the power pack, which clattered loudly on the floor. Jacknife was already after him, but Jared's pain and panic had reached a level where everything had become slow motion, as though he were seeing the whole scene underwater. He had no thought, no presence of mind; instead he passively observed himself withdraw the knife from his eye, not hearing the horrid sound it made as steel scraped bone and pierced gelatinous flesh. His arm, stiff as a poker, continued downward, never hesitating, as it drove itself into Jacknife's neck.

Then, inevitably, panic and pain struggled to the surface again and he issued a screech that nearly deafened him in the steel duct. He jerked away from Jacknife, who merely stared at Jared, clutching his throat. Blood ran over his hands in a freshet. Jared clutched his ruined eye with one hand and started at the other, still holding the dripping knife.

Jacknife's collapsing form eventually became clear behind his quivering hand, and he dropped it to his side as he watched the seasoned criminal breathe his last on the metal floor of the duct. Horrified and in pain, he scooped up the now bloody power pack and leapt over the man's body, pelting full-tilt and half-blind down the duct, his small, hard shoes sounding a staccato on the cold steel.

Alice hit B wing first, making sure everyone was in their cells. As she traversed the massive building and all its wings she caused the men to cower in their cells, giving her not only a feeling of power but a peace of mind. The prisoners knew, with Alice around they were in the Warden's pocket. They could do nothing but find defeat. Satisfied, she turned to leave the building and head to the Warden's quarters.

Suddenly, an alarm briefly sounded, and all the cell doors popped open.

_Yes, I updated. I know you didn't think I would ever update again, but I kinda caught the writing bug again, at least for a little while. It's not a long chapter but believe me, it took a hell of a long time to write. I will try to be timely with the next update and until the story is done, but I can't guarantee it. College is a lot of work. Anyway, I've missed you all! Welcome back! _


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